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Earl Talks About Dating Thelma

“I was working two jobs. I was working for Maroules Ice Cream Mixes, helping deliver ice cream mixes to
different creamy whips around the Cincinnati area and some farther out. And the woman who owned it, her
th
son whose name was Freddy had a Creamy Whip parlor down in Cincinnati around 13 and Vine so she want‐
ed to know if I would work part time for him so he could have some time off and I said sure and I went down

there and learned how to make milkshakes and malts and sundaes and sold candy corn and caramel apples
and we had soft ice cream. And so I worked down there and Thelma and her 2 sisters would come into the ice
cream parlor about every day and Freddy introduced us and I thought they were pretty, all three of them.

Thelma thought I was a wolf. But I was a flirt, so I asked her out. And she agreed to go out with me, and on
our first date, we went to the Albee Theatre and saw a movie and some boys seen me with her and wanted to
know who that good‐looking girl was.

A week or so went by and I asked her out again and we went to the Trolley Tavern to have a meal. From the

time I went to the Trolley Tavern, it was just a tavern but when we went there it was a kind of fancy
restaurant. Thelma was afraid I wouldn’t have enough money, so she didn’t order much. Then we walked
down to the river and rode on the ferry and I don’t know if we walked up to that bridge I talked about or
not. We walked around a little bit and then we went across the ferry again. I brought her back home and we

got a little more serious and started going out more and more.

I quit that job with Freddy’s mother and got a job that paid a little bit more money at Powell Valve Company.
Thelma worked for Fashion Frocks a few blocks away on the same street. At dinnertime I would go up and eat
at the Nickerbocker Saloon. They had tables that they served meals on at dinnertime. Sometimes she would
go up there. She didn’t get off at the same time I did, so when I was coming back she would be coming and we

would get to speak to each other. Then so that we could spend an extra 2 or 3 minutes together we would
sometimes pack our lunches. Fashion Frocks was just up the street from the Work House and Powell Valves
was just across from the work house and they had a little park with a little lake with big gold fish and we

would sit there and eat our lunches and then I would go on back to work and then she would go back after I
left. Then it got a little more serious. We would ride in row‐boats at Burnett Woods and go bowling at
Mergards Bowling Alley. We got to where we seen quite a bit of each other. We ate at Cincinnati Chili Parlor
just about every evening. I didn’t know it at the time, but Thelma hated chili. But she liked the pin ball

machine. She once won $20 playing it. There was a woman I knew who worked there named Ruth, and if I
didn’t have enough money she would give me something to eat. I always got along with most people. At one
time I even worked there part time.“ Earl Davison from interview in 2003